Untitled (first chapter)

It was summer in London, not that you would’ve known it – time meant nothing here now. Beneath the dull grey smog clouding the sky, lay the centre of the sector, the main building, the hub of the city. It didn’t have a name, but in large flowing letters above the wrought iron gate read “The future of our society begins here.” Inside, one of the many long corridors stretched beyond the eye could see, with stark sanitary whites and greys framing each individual cell – just like that of the Governments infamous detention camps. But this place was different. A young woman named Elle lay there, her delicate eyes shut but not quite asleep, seconds before “the made” was taken from her. Society told her she should be proud; maker of two, her third child newly born, but she felt something was wrong, something told her that this was not her destiny, she would not and had not always been used in this way.

“If I think hard – dream up pictures in my mind – then I can see it before me, I can picture it! But how can I trust this sixth sense that creeps into my dreams? Is it false hope, my imagination? I see spiky green plants covering the ground where concrete now lay. I know its there. As I walk out into the street I’m so sure I can feel it brush between my toes. Perhaps it is just a distant memory that wanders through my mind like a lost soul.”

Elle awoke to the harsh sound of the doctor’s voice. “You have done us proud! He is alive and well, you are free to leave. Go forth and multiply.” Elle flinched every time she heard those words. “Go forth and multiply.” She was sure at some point this had had a different meaning. But she couldn’t trust her memories, if that what they were. She had been taught at the education rehabilitation centre (the ERC) that man was God, women made children; it was her duty to keep the population emergent. Everyone had their place in the hierarchy, the scheme of things, and this was her place. The doctor reminded her of that.

“When the doctor’s words pour out of his mouth the word equality springs to mind. It’s like a long lost friend, yet still sounds so foreign, so incomprehensible. What does it mean? Equality. Equal. The words just spin round my mind, the letters dance, and I want to grasp them, reach out and touch. I try for some meaning! Alas, it’s not to be. But we women are simply not academic. We are not allowed. It isn’t my right to understand. I just wish this burning feeling in my stomach would go away but is intuition? It makes me feel so sure I understood these words, once!”

Now, walking through the streets, Elle covered her face. The smog was low and it was strangely cold. It felt so anomalous, leaving the building where she had once bought three human beings into the world. It felt so impersonal, abnormal, and plainly distressing. But you weren’t to know those who made you; it was an obligation to have children not a pleasure. Women should not feel another humans touch – it was impure, sinful. It was a pleasure to live and a pleasure to live only. She kept on wandering, thinking and talking to herself in her head – it was the only place she could draw her thoughts together – but even her mind seemed unfamiliar to her now. It betrayed her with thoughts of distant times, places, smells, feelings, all of which she couldn’t understand. She hadn’t been taught about this before, there had been no mention of such troubles at the ERC, and Elle felt alone.
Everyone she met along her journey ignored her, men were not permitted to speak to them, and to add to the sense of “community” the women were all given the same name, Elle – it meant “she” in European, the language adopted in 2205 when the new solidarity state came to power. She did not remember those days. She had been 20 yet she remembers nothing of her previous life. 20 years, wiped clean, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary, this was how it was to be. If she remembered she would be impure – it was the solidarity states approach. Two steps and she was home. Her small flat, white like all the other buildings in her sector. But it was her home all the same. Her bed, white and hard. Nevertheless it was her bed. And the walls now surrounding her white and clean. But they were her walls, the walls that kept her thoughts in, and kept her safe. It was alls she possessed.

“Sitting here, on my bed: I’m cold; alone; jaded. Minutes ago I had human contact. I miss human contact. The young boy I had made in my arms – but it’s not just him. It bought back feeling, emotion from somewhere else. If I sit here, really still, I can feel that contact, skin on skin. A connection, with another human being, lying on the bed beside me. Their body close to mine. Hands dancing on each others skin. Warmth exuding from them to me. Colours of reds, oranges and yellows - that of fire – build within me, hazing the scenes of human contact playing over and over in my head. I long for touch. I can remember what it feels like. But surely something so pleasurable would be a memory I hold dear. If I had experienced this before, why not now. This behaviour is frowned upon; we are warned not to give in! How could something that in my mind looks, feels so good, be so very wrong? The state loves us, why would they deny us such pleasure?”

Elle couldn’t sit still, she was so restless, fidget and on edge. The emotions inside her mind, the colour, the passion, it was all too much for on unimportant woman in her small white box of a room. She had to escape and go back to the places, the experience, the precious moments her mind was replaying to her but it wasn’t possible if they weren’t real! She stood up, rigid, but sure of herself, not like the dithering fool she had been moments ago sitting on her bed. A walk would clear the air. Blow the cobwebs from her mind, she would be sane again.

She left the block of flats and felt the cold white walls around he warming up and changing, they seemed to come to life, have colours crimson, indigo, lime, now wrapping the walls. She shook her head, her eyes were playing tricks on her, it was an optical illusion. Elle hit herself in a desperate attempt to bring herself back to reality. If she left her building acting like this she knew she would be reported or one of the security cameras would catch her peculiar behaviour. It wasn’t safe for a maker like her to be showing signs of conscious thought or contemplation, people like her didn’t’ do the thinking, they weren’t really capable after all, they were merely women. Unbeknownst to Elle she had already been seen.

She left the doors of the building, the gate way to her sanity but the outside world was no better. She stepped onto the concrete and took small, decisive steps towards the unknown destination. Sculpture enclosing the hard footpath, the geometric line linking paths to nameless targets. Elle walked down the street, men everywhere rushing around her, all with somewhere to be, and hurry in their voices and footsteps. She look at her watch – it was 21:92. 2 minutes past the maker’s curfew and it was already growing dark. The makers were not allowed to leave the “comfort” of their awkward box room after dark for fear of endangering the government’s precious wombs. Whistling as she went Elle kept walking.

“Whistling will hide the emotion inside me – they won’t know what I’m thinking, it’s a mask disguising me. I’m scared, dazed, confused, mystified, and perplexed. (These words fill my mouth and I want them to splutter out, like birds trapped inside me, flapping their wings, desperate for flight. I haven’t had an education, so how do these words and this poetry poses me so?) Everyone around me has a light guiding them from above, leading the way to where they belong, their purpose in life. Their faces grim and disturbing, emotionless freaks. Even the clock seems foreign. The numbers twisted and strange: 21:92, 21:93, 21:94, the clock is ticking but for me time is running backwards with great leaps and bounds like and hungry animal hunting down its prey. The tree sculptures look dead and lifeless. A living tree sounds absurd but as I walk down the street I can imagine them swaying too and fro, from, perhaps a breeze? A light gust of air causing the leaves – greens, golden browns, crisp thin – to skip to the ground on the waves of air. I can’t remember the date, but I can remember the feeling of the last time a breeze swan through this city, but the smog prevents that now. Where do all the memories come from? What are they? Is this not the world I have always lived in? I think I know the facts – but my mind seems alive, and intent on letting me know otherwise!”

Elle had broken into a run and the people around her looked scared.

“Oh how the trees breathe, and live, and dance among me twisting up to the sky, the grass curling round their trunks!"

She was moaning and mumbling to herself jumping through the sculpture of the trees laughing manically. She was not in the real world now. She saw a man ahead and skipped to him speaking words of another language – the old language – the banished language.

“Hello my friend – why can’t he understand me, I am free, I am a woman of knowledge, I am Catherine Howard. I am equal to all of you!”

Her memories captured her mind and were taking control. She ran, hopped, skipped, jumped in a whirlwind of excitement that was dancing around her head as the world around her seemed to come alive with colour and stimulation of her memories. People ran in all different directions, confused, scared. Every man got caught up in the drama of madness. When she fell to the floor. In a flurry of emotion she let out a cry.

“There is a world where passion, love, emotion reins, and like the Phoenix from the flame it will reignite.”